Starlight Necromancer

Chapter 46 - Astronomers

"I figured it was something like that, but..." Foster muttered quietly, before scratching the back of his head, "I doubt that there's only those two groups of otherworlders, you know?"

Lynol and Octer looked back at Foster surprised, unsure what exactly he meant, "You think there's other kinds? Like what?" Octer asked, before Foster let out a deep sigh. He thought about it for a moment, until he found a simple way to explain the idea to them, since it seemed like they thought the concept was outlandish, "Civilians." He said, since that was the most of it.

"Not everyone is some kind of huge genius, not everyone wants to be out in the public's eye. Not everyone will be able to be extremely powerful... some will just want to... you know, live in peace." He pointed out, and his two friends looked back at him surprised.

"Ya have a point..." Octer pointed out, "That means there might be a lot more otherworlders mixed in with the people of this world than expected..."

Foster closed his eyes and thought about it for a moment, "If I could somehow find others like me, then... honestly, I don't even know. It'd be great to meet others from my old world, but it's not like it's going to make a huge difference, right?"

"We can't know until it actually happens. Although, ya don't seem like you particularly wanna search for anyone, ya know?" Octer explained, and Foster shrugged in response, "It's cause I don't. If we end up picking up some kinda clue to finding an otherworlder, I might wanna pursue it, but I don't wanna go out of my way right now."

"I guess that just means we will proceed as planned? Get equipment from Zhaine, and then head to a small dungeon." Lynol said, and everyone seemed to agree, although Foster still had a bit of a question about that last part.

"By the way, how many dungeons are around this city..?" He asked, and Lynol was able to quickly answer that question, "There are about a dozen conquered dungeons, and three unconquered, not including the 'Great Dungeon' of course."

"Huh, that seems like a lot for this area, doesn't it?"

"To be fair, 'around this city' means anything within a week's travel of here." Octer said, something that surprised Foster even more. He let out a deep sigh, "That's so weird..."

"Huh? What is?" Octer asked confused, and Foster looked back at him, "In my world, if you wanted to, you could get anywhere in the world within... a day or two, I guess."

"Wait, what, how is that possible? Did you guys perfect warp magic?" Octer asked, but Lynol quickly interrupted him, "No, Foster said they don't have magic... But that really does not make sense. Is your world just incredibly small compared to ours?"

"Nah, I don't really think so... Our worlds are probably roughly the same size, considering stuff like the distance to the horizon. There might be a bit of a difference of course, but it shouldn't be huge. I was actually quite surprised at how similar this world is to mine. The same gravitational pull, the moon is roughly the same size and so is the sun, the temperature is completely the same, give or take a couple degrees... Although, that last bit isn't that surprising. This sort of complex life can't really flourish on a planet outside of this temperature range. But then again, you guys do have magic and this weird 'Archaic Records' thing connected to you, so that might not be particularly the case?" Foster pointed out, slightly losing Octer and Lynol in the middle of his small monologue. But at the same time, he realized something else that he wanted to do.

"Yo, wait... We're not really short on money right now, and we can still always sell the coins I took with me from Thiodrus' place if we need to. So for now... could we go to an astronomer, maybe?" He asked with a light grin on his face, and Octer looked back at him with a wry smile, "Astro-what?"

"Astronomer? The guys that study stars and planets and stuff. I really want to learn about the officially recognized constellations and any other noticeable asterisms." Foster said with a broad smile, already kind of excited for it. On earth, he already knew most of what there was to know about any nearby celestial bodies, and anything that could be seen directly from earth. But now that he was here, he had an ocean of new things to learn about, so it was kind of exciting.

Octer looked at Lynol to see if he understood what Foster was talking about, but that didn't seem to be the case, "But... why?" Octer asked, still confused. Clearly, he didn't put much importance into such things. Well, it's been a while since Foster had met someone on earth that was as enthusiastic about stars as he was, and it made a bit more sense for that to be the case here, where people didn't know as much about space yet. So, Foster just replied as bluntly as he could, "Because I wanna. I think space is neat, so I'd like to go talk to an Astronomer in this world about it."

"...Alright, I guess that's fine, then. We might have to walk for a while to get to one of those guys though, it's a huge city." Octer pointed out, and Foster just smiled and shrugged, "That's fine. It would be better if we learned more about this city anyway, right? We might come across some other hidden gems like Zhaine's place, right?"

"You have a point. It would be worth it long-term if we took the time where we can't do that much work-wise anyway and spent it on things like this." Lynol explained, and Foster looked back at his friends excitedly, "Perfect. Then should we just go right away?"

"I think we should probably go tomorrow... We don't even know where they are, and they probably won't be working soon anymore, right?" Octer pointed out, and Foster looked at him with a wry smile, "They're astronomers... They look at stars... They're gonna be working at night."

"...Fair point..." Octer replied, before Foster let out a slight sigh, "Let's figure out stuff for food first though. It doesn't feel like we did that much today, but it's already nearly evening."

"Let's just go to the restaurant connected to the Inn again, they have decent, cheap food." Lynol suggested, "And when we got here the other day, I saw someone eat this really big hunk of meat that looked really, really good..."

"You didn't even take off your mask for breakfast this morning, you just squeezed it through a small gap when you lifted it." Foster pointed out, and Lynol lightly shrugged, "Ah, that.. Well, I thought about it, and I think I'm going to stop wearing a mask and this huge cloak."